


Renegotiating

by Smaragdina



Series: The Nature of Man [3]
Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-28
Updated: 2012-11-28
Packaged: 2017-11-19 19:10:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/576666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smaragdina/pseuds/Smaragdina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>""What do you want?" <em>Everything.</em> She thinks of screaming, overturning his desk, sending glass and paper all crashing and shattering to the floor. Thinks of lovingly taking someone apart in the dark. <em>Absolutely <strong>everything.</strong></em> “You.”" Waverly comes to Daud with a new and desperate demand - though for once she has nothing in return. AU PWP.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Renegotiating

**Author's Note:**

> Established relationship. This story can be read as a stand-alone.
> 
> Warning: contains brief discussion of a stalker

The glass door rattles as it slams shut and Waverly stands there for a moment in his office, breath coming thin and cold through her nose. She can’t quite remember, exactly, the decision to come here. The boat ride through the Flooded District. The staircase up with its spots of mildew that have grown larger with the years, and more familiar. It’s not precisely clear, none of it; but that doesn’t matter because she is _here_ , and she knows what she –

Not wants, exactly. _Needs_.

Daud looks up from his desk (he’s working, there are maps spread all over the desk and he’s got his coat draped over the back of his chair, the ends of his gloves disappearing into turned-up shirtsleeves). His eyebrows rise. He half-stands as she crosses the room. “And what brings you to –”

It ends in a sharp startled sort of sound as she curls her fingers in his collar and yanks him to  her. Daud tenses. Does not pull away, not quite; but his hands only settle on her shoulders and the kiss he returns is dry and brief and not enough. “What do you want?”

“Do shut up.”

“Mm.” He tastes of salt and smoke, as ever, some sort of expensive tobacco and _fire_ and she wants to drown herself into his mouth, wants to take possession of this man and take him down to a dark room and take him apart – Waverly _shudders_ against him and kisses him like she has no time. Which she doesn’t. Her fingers are cold against his collar. Her fingers are shaking as they start to undo his shirt. It’s weakness, or something, whatever had driven her blindly up here, tiny tremors just below the surface. _Obvious_. Daud breaks the kiss, does not give her what she desires, steps back against the bookshelf and rattles it. “ _Stop._ What do you want?”

Waverly closes her eyes. Draws a cold breath _. Everything_. She thinks of screaming, overturning his desk, sending glass and paper all crashing and shattering to the floor. Thinks of lovingly taking someone apart in the dark. _Absolutely **everything**_. “You.”

“No.” He catches her chin in his hand. Makes her open her eyes and look at him.

She has never, in the scant handful of years she’s known him, known Daud to remove his gloves for more than the time or two she’d _insisted_ and been allowed to trace or tongue the mark on the palm of his hand. The gloves, now, are quite cold on her skin. Waverly’s throat works as she swallows down something she can’t quite name.

“You only come here when you want something,” says Daud quietly. He studies her. She keeps still as the hand drops from her face and trails down her arm, thoughtful, finds its way to more interesting territories. “You only ever want to fuck when I can give you something. Not that I mind. But what do you _want?”_ His eyes narrow. “Look at you. You’re actually _fright_ -”

Taste of salt and smoke and being burnt alive and drowning, yes indeed. Daud makes a low growl of a noise into her mouth. Waverly can’t tell if it’s _annoyed_ or _pleased_. She does not care. Does not _care,_ because when she insinuates herself against his body like this, curves against rigid lines, he is not a subtle or shy man at all.

_What do you want?_

It is laughably easy to _take this man apart_ , strip him down to a _want_ that is so easy to name.

His hands are trailing over her breasts and her hips and her ass and the small of her back, all the different parts of her in turn, parceling her off. Not what she wants. She takes his hands, settles herself between his thighs and helps him peel her jacket and blouse and all the rest away like snakeskin. The sound that he makes when she seals her mouth against the rough curve of his throat is _lovely._ “I want – ” she begins.

She wants so many, many things.

She closes her eyes. Sets her teeth against the line of a vein, carefully, feels it thrum. Daud’s hand slides down her back and chills her in its wake, and the room is so cold. At least it seems that way to her. She blazes in the middle of it. “There’s a man,” she manages. Into his skin, his pulse. The words are sharp. “I need you to kill him.”

Daud stills.

“Please,” she adds after a moment.

It is not a request.

He stills – and  he twists himself away from her. Waverly makes a sharp indignant noise and crosses her arms over her breasts but then he lifts her, carefully, sits her upon his desk so that they are of height to look each other in the eye.

It is not like she has anywhere else to look.

Daud’s fingers are tangled in her  hair and he wrenches her head up, and there is no distance between them at all. His free hand does not cease in its exploration of her skin (which has gone, it seems, from leisurely to businesslike); does not cease in quietly removing her clothing, either. But his eyes are very flat. It puts her in mind of the eyes of a shark. Waverly wonders how she could have ever forgotten what this man does, or did: that this is the most pure sort of exchange that he knows.

“Spare me your begging,” he says. “What are you offering?”

Negotiations. Not refusal. Her tongue passes out over her lips. She watches his eyes follow it. “I can – ”

“Forget your money,” Daud snaps. He helps her peel away her trousers, catches her wrist when she reaches for the ties of his own. Releases her as soon as he can feel the way her hand is shaking. She can see that he’s already hard but there are more important matters, it seems – like the way he braces her by the small of her back, stroke the tip of one gloved finger over her folds so that her hips jerk and she _hisses_. Her nails make a sharp scratching sound against the wood of the desk. He doesn’t seem to care. “I don’t want your money,” he goes on. “The Crown needs it and I have more than I know what to do with.”

The sound in Waverly’s throat is a small despairing sort of moan and she grabs at him with the hand that isn’t scrabbling uselessly over the wood, tries to drag him to her. He will not let himself be moved. Fingers between her legs, incessant. “Take off your gloves,” she manages.

“No.” Inside her, now, curled, flat of his palm curved against her. She imagines the mark that she knows is there rubbing against her flesh and a shiver goes up her spine. “What are you offering?”

To the Void with him, he’s still half-dressed and it shouldn’t be this _good_.

Waverly tries a smirk. “I can get on my knees for –” and the _you_ is lost in a gasp and a snap of her hips. She bites her lip and closes her eyes. It is something that she never does and that they both know she hates, in any context: the symbolism of it, the grit and cold of the floor on her knees.

“No,” he repeats.

“Then I-I can speak to – ”

“You won’t offer me anything” says Daud flatly, “that you hadn’t already planned on doing for yourself.”

They have been doing this, seeing each other like this, for three or four scant years. He knows her far too well.

His mouth finds hers and smothers the despairing cry she wants to make, fierce and possessive and tasting all of fire, and Waverly finds herself straining towards him and seeking out whatever contact she can find even as her hands splay flat against the wood, skitter over their papers and maps and precious plans. Her back arches. Her body is pulled taut around the center of the world that is his hand, the hand inside the glove, dammit, why won’t he _touch_ her. “I am sick,” Daud mutters (and she wonders if she’s even intended to hear or if he’s even talking to her at all) “of your _games_ , of being a toy, you have _no idea_.” And his mouth is _cruel_ and the hand that’s not working so sweetly down between her legs describes the curves of her breasts and her hips and her ass as if she is being parceled off, taken apart in a dark room where no one will hear the screaming –

Waverly shivers against him, and she cannot say why, and the words all come tumbling out in a flood.

“His name is Brisby,” she manages. “H-he follows my sister home. He’s been caught in the…the garden. She woke up this morning with the window open, missing a lock o-of her hair. He’s told several men _'in jest'_ what he wishes to do to her and –” She breaks off, panting. Desire _twists_ the words in her mouth, makes them come out sharp and raw and flavored all with fire. “I _need_ him dead because – ”

Daud’s mouth finds a place high on her throat where he will be sure to leave a mark, dark and solid for all to see, and all her words trail off and get tangled and lost somewhere between his teeth and her white skin.

“Your sister,” he murmurs.

“Y-yes.”

“Not you.”

“Yes, please –”

 _Emptiness_ , sudden and shocking; and the gloves aren’t gentle against her skin, her hips, not at _all_ as he lets her up, turns her around, pushes her down against the desk with all their papers and scheming spread out below her and against her bare breasts and belly. Waverly tries to get up for only a moment. She can feel his lips ghosting over her hair. Clink of a belt buckle. Hard heat pressed so suddenly against her.

“I can poison him,” Daud murmurs. “Spike his Elixir. A quiet thing. No one will ever know.”

“No. I want you to _kill_ him.”

Her voice cracks on _kill_ as he takes her in one solid, steady thrust. Waverly curls her nails underneath the rim of the desk and gouges up splinters as the second thrust rocks it, a bit. Thunk of wooden legs on wooden floor. The words she speaks are little bursts of heat on her stinging lips. “I want  you to murder him,” Waverly breathes, even as she presses back against him, even as her body is borne down under the rhythm of his. “I want you to stab his throat or slit him open, I want his blood al over the streets, I want you to come back soaked with it – ”

Daud’s voice is _harsh_ on the edges. “You’ve got no idea what you’re asking.”

“I-I don’t care.” She twists over her shoulder to look at him, and the angle is awkward and it does not _matter_ because her eyes are glittering and his own are dark, so dark. “I want you to rip him to pieces, and I want you to leave him in the gutter for the rats so that no one will ever, ever find him –”

The desk rocks and she gives a _cry_ , panting, back arched like a drawn bow, and his mouth against the nape  of her neck is a brand on her skin. Daud presses her down. All the words she wants to say, the murder and the _demands_ , get all twisted and wrenched into whimpers when faced with that incessant heat. “Stupid man,” he’s muttering (and she’s not intended to hear, she’s _not,_ the words are rough and make no _sense_ ). “Idiot. Going after your sisters instead of you,” and the wood scrapes rhythmic against wood and something flutters to the floor, one of their maps or precious plans.

There are no words after that. Daud has no tenderness at all, but this is nothing new – he is just a fierce _intent,_ and Waverly arches underneath him and thinks of things being ripped apart and claimed in the dark. She snaps against him when she comes, wordless red _want_ ; and no sooner has he finished and bitten his climax into the mark on her skin than he gathers her up. Sets her on shaky feet. The room shivers around them.

She does not question how they have suddenly arrived in his bed just up the stairs. She just knows that it is familiar, creaky rusted springs and everything else; that he peels off the gloves and traces all her curves, finds the shape of her, and it is not like being owned or parceled off in a dark and secret room at all.

That her hands, at some point, stop shaking.

“Brisby?” he confirms, sometime much later when the evening light is coloring all the wood and glass in the room with fire and gold. Waverly is curled up and languid and content amidst the tangle of his sheets; but at the name, her head snaps up.

She nods, once. Considers. “They can’t know.”

Daud gives the ghost of a laugh. “You don’t want your sisters to know that you have a heart?”

“I have put _everything_ into them,” she corrects. Curls and re-curls herself amidst the sheets, props up her head in her hands and watches him with coolly glittering eyes. “It is,” she says, “a matter of investment.”

“Ah. Of course.”

“Of course.”

Daud only nods. She watches something flicker in his eyes, under the mask that he is so careful to keep. That they are both so careful to keep. He stands, and Waverly considers rising with him; but he does not quite look at her and she settles back after a moment, contents herself with listening to the sounds of him getting dressed, gathering his things, preparing.

When she wakes in the morning, the room will be thick with the smell of blood. It will spatter and soak the coat that he drapes on the chair. It will be under his nails as he tilts her head back and kisses her, and she will hardly notice that the _hunger_ in that touch will not taste of ambition at all.


End file.
